There should’ve been 21 assignments for me to grade, and yet, I was looking at 22. It didn’t make any sense. I double and triple-checked the pile of papers, but there was no mistake. I only had 21 students, and yet, there were 22 pages to grade.
I was hunched over my desk, going through the pages one by one. I took note of all the names, trying to find the extra assignment. They were all simple essays where they described what they’d done during winter break, and what they were most looking forward in the coming year. A simple English assignment.
In the middle of the pile there was one paper that clearly stood out. It was barely legible, and there was no signature. The text was written in squiggly lines with a red pen, pressed so hard into the paper that it had punched several holes.
“I’ll be free,” the paper said. “I got out, and she has no idea there’s two of us now.”
The paper was barely legible. Half-finished sentences describing a sudden awakening. Thoughts of breaking things. Describing people as disposable objects. Hearing a voice in the mirror.
“My friend gave me a flower, and now I’m here.”
There was a scribbled drawing of a blue sunflower in the corner of the paper.
It was the strangest thing I’d ever read.
Yeah, I’m a teacher. The kids I teach are on the edge of turning into teenagers. It’s an awkward age, but it is that space in a young person’s life where you can really make an impact. If you can make them feel seen and heard they might gain a confidence that’ll follow them for the rest of their lives.
I have 21 students in my class. 8 boys, and 13 girls.
The day after I graded that paper, I didn’t know what to think, or say. After I took attendance, it dawned on me; whoever handed in that paper was in the room, right now. It threw my off my tempo. I had them do some individual assignments while I found my bearings.
It was the usual ruckus. Bickering and joking. Awkward teenage flirting. Loud discussions about whatever was new online. But something felt different. Malevolent.
It had to be one of the girls. The paper had hinted at it. But which one?
I handed out an extra assignment. Nothing fancy. I just took the “crazy” paper out of the bunch and distributed the rest randomly to the students. For tomorrow, they were to write a short essay telling me about what they’d read in the other students’ essay. Reading comprehension and writing at once? No one would have a problem with that, except the students.
As I got back home with some take-out sushi, I looked over the strange paper again. There were some smudges going left to right. No matter if you’re right-handed or left-handed, that’ll happen. But further down, there were more smudges. It looked like the writer had held the pen like a hook, with the pen facing the writer. It indicated a left-handed writer. I double-checked with a few articles online, which said the same thing.
But there were no hook-handed writers in my class, I would’ve noticed. But I was sure there were a few left-handed people.
I finished my sushi and went to bed with a chilling feeling that I was missing something obvious.
The next day, I got the assignments. All 21 of them, no extras. I breathed a sigh of relief, figuring that maybe someone had just played a cruel prank on me. We got through the classes of the day without a hitch; we even managed a fairly successful math quiz. All in all, I wasn’t complaining.
The extra assignment wasn’t that important, but I took them home to grade them anyway. Some had put some effort into their work, and I wanted to reward them. No matter the age, everyone loves gold star stickers, and I had plenty on my crafts table.
I started going through the papers, only to notice something.
There were, once again, 22 of them.
At some point during the day, someone had snuck an extra paper in there.
Going through the pages, I couldn’t help but to feel that bubbling sense of dread. One of these papers was going to be terrifying. It felt like getting slowly pricked by a needle; at first there’s just a pressure, but you know the hurt is coming.
It was at the bottom of the pile. Red ink, barely legible. Spots from a hook-handed writer.
“I know you’ve caught on,” the paper said. “I want you to know. I want you to chase.”
There were little sketches of drops of blood falling into an open mouth. Crude, but clear.
“Chase me. I chase you.”
I didn’t sleep well that night. I pulled the curtains. I double-checked all the locks. I pulled the covers up tight, and I left the light on in the hallway. And yet, I still had that awful sinking feeling that I was missing something.
Was it Claire? She’d always been a bit of an oddball. Or maybe someone I’d never expect, like Shanda? Maybe Petra? Fiona?
I had this mental image of someone following me to my car. A young girl hiding in the back seat. A maniacal smile popping up in the rear-view mirror. Sharp little nails and unblinking eyes diving towards me, cutting my throat open as I’m going 70 mph down the freeway.
I didn’t sleep well that night. I started imagining shadows passing by in the hall, in the corner of my eye.
A few days passed.
I started taking notes on the girls in class. I checked what pens they had, and which was their main hand. If it was just a matter of someone pranking me, it might be enough just to find a left-handed girl. However, no girl in my class was left-handed, and no one owned a red ink pen.
I also had a chat with the school counsellor. They couldn’t betray patient confidentiality, but they could tell me whether they were aware of any problems that might explain this.
They weren’t. If anything, they seemed more worried about me. Since this started, I’d seemed a bit on edge. They didn’t blame me, but they wanted to make sure I was taking care of myself.
I tried several tricks. I tried monitoring the hand-ins. I tried watermarking the papers. I tried all kinds of tricks, but I got nothing. At the end of the day, I kept getting outsmarted. It was as if the paper just appeared out of nowhere, sometime during the day. I couldn’t pin it on anyone.
I tried to just forget about it, but every time I graded a paper I feared that another threat would show up. Sometimes it did, sometimes it didn’t. But the times it did, it just… ruined me. That peaceful moment of grading papers and listening to audio books had turned into a horrific slideshow.
“I’ll show you,” one of the notes said. “I’ll break a light in your house.”
The same day, the kitchen light stopped working. It didn’t look broken, but how could I possibly tell?
One of those days, as I was chopping leeks in the kitchen, I got this awful sinking feeling in my stomach. Looking out the window, I noticed something. A silhouette, just a few feet away.
She was short, with long black hair. There was something wrong with the shape of her face. Her skin looked gray.
For a moment, we just stared at one another. It took me a few seconds to realize that it wasn’t just a face.
It was a skull.
Still clutching my kitchen knife, I stumbled away from the window. It had to be a mask.
That wasn’t a real face, it couldn’t be.
Suddenly the lights broke. All of them. The kitchen, the hallway, the bathroom. Hell, even my desktop lamp at my home office. All of them shattered, spreading searing hot shards across the floor with a violent bang. My ears rang, and I dove for cover. It felt like a gunshot.
Looking up, there was no one left outside. No mask, no kid, no nothing.
I called the police, but there was little they could do. There had been a power surge, that much the electric company could confirm, but there were no witnesses of an intruder. I showed them the notes and filed a threat report. We had a long talk, and they tried their best to calm me down. But at the end of the day I was still alone, and someone was out there.
I went through that image in my head a thousand times.
I had several girls in my class, but no one that fit what I’d seen. Her hair was too long. She was too short, too skinny. I couldn’t think of anyone that fit that description.
But she’d been there. No doubt in my mind.
And I had this gnawing feeling that I’d seen her before.
Over the next couple of days, I couldn’t stop seeing her. She’d be across the road as I went to work in the morning. I’d see her pass by the window in the cafeteria. And one day, as I was driving home, I saw her in the rear-view mirror of my car.
That gray death’s head grinning at me.
I was getting more notes. Not just slipped into the hand-in assignments, but also just… scattered around my apartment.
At one point, I snapped.
I’d just stepped out of the shower. I’d put on a bathrobe and had started to dry my hair when I noticed a message on the bathroom mirror. There, written backwards, it simply said “Chase me”.
I screamed as my heart sunk. I broke the bathroom mirror with my hair dryer.
“What the fuck do you want from me?!” I called out. “What the fuck is wrong with you?!”
I barely noticed the glass shards cutting into my feet as I stormed out. I’d had enough. I had to do something. I couldn’t live like this forever. Kid or not, this had to end.
“Where are you?!” I called out as I passed through my bedroom. “Where the fuck are you?!”
I glimpsed something outside the window. Of course she was around. Always there, always near.
“Come out!” I screamed as I entered the kitchen. “Show yourself!”
The moment I stepped into the kitchen, it shook.
Every drawer, every door, every appliance. Everything flung open, as if pulled opened by a steady hand. I was so frustrated I could cry. I just wanted it to end, but I was too scared to move. It felt like anything could happen, at any moment. Like the entire world was listening to me and reacting accordingly.
I just stood there, trying to remember to breathe.
“Please,” I whispered. “Show yourself. Stop this.”
And as if to answer my call, she did.
The front door creaked. The hinges rusted and fell apart. A gentle breeze was all it took for the door to break.
She was so small. There was no doubt in my mind; she wasn’t wearing a mask.
She was nothing but bone.
I backed away, like an animal pushed into a corner. I tried to force myself to attack, to… do something. But as a response, the kitchen shook again. This time, it was pandemonium. Cutlery crashed onto the floor. Plates rolled out of the dishwasher and broke apart. Glasses shot across the room like bullets. Even the little drawer of miscellanea collapsed in on itself, spreading knick-knacks and rubber bands all over the room.
“I’ve chased you!” I screamed. “Are we fucking done?! Is this it?!”
She raised a thin, gray finger. She pointed at something in the corner.
A dry, blue, sunflower.
Something clicked in my head. That sense of missing something. It was still there, but this was the answer. Somehow, this was it.
“What do you mean? What… just… just talk! Don’t just-“
There it was.
The first note. There’d been a drawing of a blue sunflower, and it said she’d gotten it as a present.
This was that flower. I was sure of it.
“I got out, and she has no idea there’s two of us now.”
That’s what it’d said. That was part of that very first note.
She was talking about me.
I’d written those notes myself. I’d handed in the “assignments”. That’s how I never noticed it.
I looked over at my crafts table. My red ink pen was half empty by now. I had red smudges under my left hand.
And then there was her. Of course I’d seen her before. Time and time again.
I had long black hair as a kid. I’d been skinny and short.
“You found me,” her little voice said. “Funny.”
The images came flooding back.
A shadow in the bathroom mirror. A simple ‘hello’, and a flower offered. I remember taking the hand of an impossible being, reaching across a nightmare space to darken my inner child. This awful, malevolent being living at the core of my soul. Something dead and resurrected, trying to make room for madness.
But it wasn’t just madness. She was real. Doors don’t rust by themselves. Glasses don’t throw themselves. And I can’t for the life of my cause an electric surge with my mind. This was a real being, with real power. And she’d settled in the back of my mind.
And now, I’d chased her. I’d found her.
“Do you want me to leave?” she asked. “I can.”
I didn’t know what to say. Of course I wanted her gone. I wanted it all to be over. But there was this gnawing feeling that there was more to it. She didn’t just scare me and torture me for the fun of it.
“Tell me to leave,” she insisted. “Set me free.”
That was it, wasn’t it? She wasn’t free. She came from me, and so, maybe she was stuck with me. Maybe she couldn’t leave. Maybe she couldn’t hurt anyone else. Not as long as I’m around.
It’d said “I’ll be free” in that first note. That meant she wasn’t free as of now.
To me, it suddenly made sense.
Standing there, I just shook my head.
“You can’t leave, can you?” I cackled. “You’re… you’re just as stuck with me as I-I am with you!”
“I could kill you,” she laughed.
“N-no, you… you can’t, can you? If so, why haven’t you?”
There was no response.
“You need me to cut you loose, to… to get out there. Don’t you? That… that I find you, and just… let go.”
I took a step forward and saw blood seeping out from the sole of my feet. My hands were rattling like leaves in the wind.
“I’m not letting go!” I screamed. “No fucking way!”
“I’ll hurt you.”
“Do your fucking worst!”
But there was nothing more. In the blink of an eye, she was gone. But in my mind’s eye, I could still see her. Every memory of seeing myself as a kid was tainted. I had memories of seeing myself in the mirror with a skeleton-faced grin. I remember seeing my reflection in water puddles. I knew that wasn’t what I’d looked like, but in my head, that was me. We were interchangeable. She was me, and I was her. Two beings, and I was gonna keep her here.
I’ll be a walking fucking jail.
I know it sounds absurd. But she is real, and nothing I can do changes that. I couldn’t live with that thing coming out; reaching other people. Spreading.
I can’t work at the school anymore; she scares the children. I’m afraid of seeing other people. She hurts them whenever she gets the chance. I’ve seen birds fall out of the sky. A family of moles lying dead at my doorstep. Circles of roadkill lined up around my car. I’ve been thrown, cut, burned, and beaten; but I haven’t succumbed. She is just as scared of me as I am of her.
I had to write this down. If you’re reading this, something has happened. Maybe an accident, maybe I’ve grown sick. I’ve set up for this to be posted as my post-mortem, as an explanation for my eccentric behavior. It’s on a 7-day timer, so if I haven’t confirmed my status by that time, it is safe to say I’m not around anymore.
And if I died, I pray to God I took her with me.
I don’t want to think about what that thing could do if set free.
Unbound.
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